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Seeing the deaths about to happen i was like "no, please no" cause my eyes were watering. The anime did its job well in accomplishing the emotional affect, nothing too important was skipped in this episode but the skips were blatantly obvious though. Maybe if I had time to be a hardcore LN reader for this series I would be more angry at that.

Seriously? You barely knew the characters who died - I mean, it's just plot fodder to build up the stoic nature of Kirito. Hell, I can't even remember everyone's name besides Sachi.

You must of bawled your eyes out for any series that has even a sliver of tragedy.

Not sure how many are complaining, but I enjoyed episode 3.
Even though you don't really get anyones names other than Sachi, the point in showing off Kirito's guilt and hubris was spot-on.

Klein was also a treat. He reminds me of a good bro-characters that pop up in many VN who are the MC's best friend.

Watching the Guild Party get massacred was brutal, especially the first guy getting repeatedly pick-axed. Ouch.
Then afterwards, showing the only left, committing suicide. As if Kirito wasn't feeling bad enough, he had to watch that happen, blaming himself.

The guild leader pretty much lost everything. All his friends he knew IRL, and he just spent all the money they all saved up together for a guildhouse for no-one. Literally lost everything.

Kinda surprised it hasn't gone Lord of the Flies yet, seeing how many months they've all been stuck there so far.

We're zipping through these floors, so presumably the last few floors are going to take up the lion's share of screen time.

On a more meta note, an MMO without 'magic' might be interesting. Boss designs that aren't designed around having enough healing to outheal the Boss's outgoing damage would be quite a thing. I like to believe I'll live long enough to see an MMO not bury itself under the ennui of a decades-old combat system. At least I get to see it in anime-form!

Lastly, I'm going to just hand-wave the whole how-are-they-keeping-those-bodies-alive-in-the-real-world thing at this point.

Instead of Chronologically, I think they really should have done the short stories which aren't integral to understanding the story into OVA format released after the series had its run. Though, even though I'm not a LN reader, I think that route would resemble how SAO was written.

They've actually skipped as many side stories as they've adapted. And the two they have adapted are as integral to the overall story as Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody is to Haruhi Suzumiya. The first three episodes form a major character arc for Kirito as he shoulders more and more responsibility for himself -- to become a top line player and clear the game, to take the heat for the other beta testers, to protect Sachi and the Black Cats -- until he buckles under the weight of it all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron Maw

Ep 3:

The word "Abrupt" would pretty much sum up this episode. I mean suddenly at the start he's with a bunch of strangers, he hangs with them, they die and he attempts to revive one of them who he barely spent time with to relieve his guilty conscience.

Enh. The chyrons established that he spent several months with them, and the one he wanted to resurrect was sleeping with him, even if it was non-sexual.

Well, episode 3 certainly was a bit....erratic I suppose? I mean we start on floor 28, then jump up to floor 49 and then end on floor 32, while just last week Kirito JUST defeated the boss of the first floor.

I guess this means we have very large skips in time here, but I suppose that's okay because outside of what they were showing us this episode, there's probably not much to be seen aside from Kirito level grinding and trying to survive while soloing. That wouldn't exactly be the most thrilling thing to watch for numerous episodes. You DO need character interaction and development, and that seems to be majorly what they focused on for this episode.

It seems to me Kirito's becoming more and more distant from others and unwilling to join any parties or guilds now after that trap wiped out Sachi and the others of the Black Cats. I suppose he believes if he never grows attached to anybody, he'll have nothing to lose anymore.

Though I would like clarification on one thing, who was that guy who commited suicide after Kirito told him he was a Beater? A member of the Black Cats guild? And was the reason he committed suicide because he believed that Kirito betrayed them and was not intending to protect them in the first place because he was a Beater?

Anyway, didn't really make me tear up or sad, but you can still sense some of the emotional turmoil these characters are going through thanks to this episode. It all just makes me even more curious on why Kayaba is perfectly content messing with these people's lives and what the heck he's trying to accomplish by doing so.

Well, episode 3 certainly was a bit....erratic I suppose? I mean we start on floor 28, then jump up to floor 49 and then end on floor 32, while just last week Kirito JUST defeated the boss of the first floor.

I guess this means we have very large skips in time here, but I suppose that's okay because outside of what they were showing us this episode, there's probably not much to be seen aside from Kirito level grinding and trying to survive while soloing. That wouldn't exactly be the most thrilling thing to watch for numerous episodes. You DO need character interaction and development, and that seems to be majorly what they focused on for this episode.

It seems to me Kirito's becoming more and more distant from others and unwilling to join any parties or guilds now after that trap wiped out Sachi and the others of the Black Cats. I suppose he believes if he never grows attached to anybody, he'll have nothing to lose anymore.

Though I would like clarification on one thing, who was that guy who commited suicide after Kirito told him he was a Beater? A member of the Black Cats guild? And was the reason he committed suicide because he believed that Kirito betrayed them and was not intending to protect them in the first place because he was a Beater?

Anyway, didn't really make me tear up or sad, but you can still sense some of the emotional turmoil these characters are going through thanks to this episode. It all just makes me even more curious on why Kayaba is perfectly content messing with these people's lives and what the heck he's trying to accomplish by doing so.

He's the member who went off to buy the house. Though, -50 points for committing suicide, rather than living on and avenging their deaths.

As for wondering why Kayaba is content messing with people's lives...you must be young.

Yeah, as pointed out already the episode was......a bit erratic. The time skips didn't work out too well, and again, time crunching doesn't help. I definitely didn't feel the sadness with Sachi, and before anybody says "it doesn't work because of the media differences" again, I've seen plenty of anime-adapted tragic scenes that made me cry more than the source material. This episode was just far too rushed to pull it off.

Fortunately I can still take solace in the fact this means we'll get to the meat of the story sooner. (and of course, certain chapters of the novel that I'm particularly looking forward too )

I won't bother to say anything else since, again, it's already been said, and the rabid anime defenders would likely swoop in to defend everything this week again if I go on for too long.

As for wondering why Kayaba is content messing with people's lives...you must be young.

Well if you consider 20 years of age young.

And I figure we need to know his motive before we can come to any conclusions on why he's content with killing so much. But I dunno, maybe I am more ignorant than I thought I was if you already know the answer like you're implying.

LOL rabid. If there was a word to describe the section of LN readers who nitpick and whine about every adaptation, that would be it. I would be surprised too if I didn't see the hilarious reactions the Fate Zero anime got during its run.

Well, if you really want to animate everything in the light novel into the anime, including all the monologue everything, what you got will be something like Nisemonogatari, which wont really help, especially in genres like SAO.
I think the episode is a decent episode, they animate all key points in the novel and and the animation is good.

I'm only an anime watcher and although I liked episode 2 a lot despite many people complaining about pacing, episode 3 did indeed have some MAJOR pacing problems. We went from Kirito joining a guild, to him meeting Klein, to Sachi being emo, to the Black Cats being killed off in a secret dungeon, to Testuo commiting suicide, to killing the boss that drops that revival item, to melodrama over a Christmas message.

Like wtf. I felt like I watched 5-6 episodes compacted into one.

I forget but is this a 1cour or 2 cour series? I'm pretty sure it's 2 cour but they seem to be treating it as 1 cour. Actually no, they are treating it if it was a 6 ep OVA series. Unless they want to get the "meaty" parts asap, but dammit. That's some REALLY rushed development. I mean last episode we were on the first floor and Kirito at the start of the ep was lvl 40, at the end of the ep he's lvl 48. o_O

But for a rushed episode, it wasn't catastrophic. Just that I didn't feel a damn thing when the guild got killed off. Hoping this isn't the kind of pacing we are to expect from now on.

? I understand melodrama to be whenever a character's reaction to something is ridiculously over the top... not sure what's excessive about someone crying after receiving an emotional message from a dead friend of theirs...

I agree otherwise though, I enjoyed the episode but it was somewhat jarring. And Kirito was actually level 70 was by the end.

Enh. The chyrons established that he spent several months with them, and the one he wanted to resurrect was sleeping with him, even if it was non-sexual.

I know that, but my problem with it is how was presented. The whole thing was so fast paced it that felt like he only knew them for really short time. Saichi's role was also pretty generic and anyone could have filled it honestly. I dunno, I'm agreement others in topic that this say 2 episodes would have been better or integration through flashback.